Prime Day came late this year and kickstarted what we expect to be an interesting Q4, with much of the world still dealing with COVID-19 and uncertainty around holiday shipping. Amazon noted in its press release that Prime Day 2020 “marked the two biggest days ever for small and medium businesses” on Amazon, with third-party sellers surpassing more than $3.5 billion in sales.
How did Prime Day look for ChannelAdvisor customers? In this post, we look at the performance of select categories on Prime Day relative to recent performance.
First, some important points to understand before digging into the data:
- This data is based on marketplaces GMV (gross merchandise value) aggregated across our entire global customer base and compares October 13 and 14, 2020 against the average daily GMV of the prior 7-days (October 6-12, 2020). In other words, we are comparing Prime Day to recent performance.
- Although Amazon Prime Day is an Amazon event, many other retailers and marketplaces also promote sales and consumers are primed to shop. Thus, this data is inclusive of all marketplaces on the ChannelAdvisor platform and should not be construed as indicative of Amazon or other individual marketplace performance. This data is also not a proxy for overall e-commerce activity or the performance of any individual business, including ChannelAdvisor.
- This analysis does not include all categories supported by ChannelAdvisor.
- All calculations are done in USD. Global currencies are converted to USD using the conversion rate on the day of the order. These results are not normalized to account for fluctuating exchange rates, though the impact should be limited over this short time period.
Based on our data, consumer electronics and related categories were the big winners. The top-performing category for ChannelAdvisor customers was Consumer Electronics, which consists of audio, video, vehicle electronics, GPS, surveillance and related items. Cell Phones, Computers/Networking, and Cameras/Photo were also in our top five performing categories on Prime Day. Clearly, consumers took advantage of deals to stock up on all sorts of electronic gadgets.
Outside of electronics, the Home & Garden category grew significantly relative to the prior 7-day run rate. Standout subcategories included furniture, kitchen, bath, rugs, and household supplies/cleaning.
With Prime Day 2020 now behind us, it’s on to the rest of Q4!